He opened his eyes and shook his head, regretting it the moment he felt hammerblows of concussion reverberate inside his skull. The Lord of the Unfleshed towered above him, his thickly-muscled body pierced by a score of long blades and burned by innumerable lasburns. The creature reached down to lift him to his feet, and Leonid saw the bodies of those who had been about to kill him.

They looked like an explosion in an anatomist's collection, a mass of severed limbs and burst-open bodies.

'Thank you,' managed Leonid, wiping blood from the side of his head and bending to retrieve his fallen weapon.

'You Tribe,' replied the Lord of the Unfleshed as though no other explanation was needed. Without another word, the creature hurled itself back into the fray. Scores of the Unfleshed were dead, but the remainder fought on, unrelenting in their savagery. More and more of their foes were pouring into the chamber and Leonid knew it would not be long until they were overwhelmed.

He looked up towards the gantries surrounding the chamber, willing Uriel and Pasanius to hurry.

The veins on Uriel's arms stood out like steel hawsers as he pulled on the chain. Bracing themselves against the raised edge of the scaffolding before him, they hauled with all their might on the chain.

Uriel's booted feet slipped and he spread his stance to gain better leverage. The grinding pain in his chest and neck from his cracked bones tore into him as he pulled, but he focussed his mind, using all the discipline he had been taught at Agiselus and in the Temple of Hera to shut it out.

'Come on, damn you!' he yelled at the chain, hearing the ferocious sounds of battle and knowing that the Unfleshed were dying for him.

He could not let them down, and redoubled his efforts.

Pasanius strained at the chain also, sweat popping from his brow as he hauled on the chain. The sergeant was much stronger than Uriel, but had only one arm with which to heave at the chain.

Together, they put every ounce of their hatred for the Iron Warriors into their efforts.

Uriel roared in pain and frustration as he kept on pulling.

And suddenly he felt give…

Yelling in triumph, the two Ultramarines pulled even harder, feeling tendons tear in their shoulders and arms, but pushing their bodies to the limits of power.

Without warning, the awl-chain tore loose and Uriel saw a flaring spurt of white fire as the silver spike ripped free of the ancient daemon's flesh.

The red-scaled creature dropped, silver-white flashes exploding against its body where its falling weight tore the other two silver awls from its body.

It landed in the lake of blood with an enormous splash, sending a tidal wave of crimson spilling throughout the chamber. It vanished beneath the churning surface of the lake and Uriel felt a prescient sense of inevitability seize him as he watched the hissing red pool.

'We did it!' shouted Pasanius.

'Yes,' agreed Uriel, watching as the surface of the lake parted and the massive daemon reared up to its full height, arc lightning playing about its lustrous, scarlet flesh, 'I am beginning to wonder if we should have.'

High up in the tower of iron, Onyx cried out as though struck and dropped to his knees, clutching his head as his soulless silver eyes blazed with sudden awareness. Honsou saw the movement and looked up, irritated at having his battle-planning with Cadaras Grendel interrupted.

Then he saw the look of alarm on Onyx's face.

'What is it?' he demanded.

'The Heart of Blood!' hissed the daemonic symbiote.

'What about it?'

'It's free…' said Onyx.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Heart of Blood threw back its horned skull and roared in lunatic pain, its bellow of rage and madness filling the chamber at a pitch that pierced the soul and drew screams of primal fear from almost every living thing within it. The lake of blood boiled where it stood and its eyes burned with white fire that blazed with ancient malice.

Its shaggy, horned head twisted as it surveyed its surroundings, as though seeing them for the first time, and its bloated body threw off great bolts of dark lightning that exploded with red fire.

The Heart of Blood's flesh was scaled and thick tufts of shaggy, matted hair ran down the length of its spine. The great wounds on its back, where the Savage Morticians had removed its wings, smoked with a liquid, red bloom, like a cloud of ink released underwater.

Its chest heaved violently, the thudding echoes of its heartbeat filling the chamber as it ripped away the pulsing red tube that pierced its chest and fed it the tainted blood of psykers. The flood of vital fluid gushed into the lake.

'Guilliman preserve us!' breathed Pasanius as the daemon stepped forwards, striding purposefully to the shore, the spark of its hoofed feet on the lakebed throwing up gouts of flaming blood.

'A daemon,' said Uriel. 'One of the fell princes of Chaos…'

'What do we do?' said Pasanius.

Uriel drew his sword as the huge daemon reached the edge of the lake of blood and reared up to its full height.

'We ready our souls for the end,' he said simply.

Honsou watched the sky around his fortress burn with an actinic blue light. Hundreds of pillars of pellucid blue flame surrounded Khalan-Ghol, spearing kilometres upwards from the plain below, like oil-wells gushing with precious fuel. The azure fire seethed and Honsou could see living nightmares swirling within the flames, the dreadful power and malice of the warp contained within them.

'What's happening?' he demanded.

'The towers!' said Onyx.

'Towers? What towers?'

'The ones we saw when we made that sortie into Berossus's camp,' said Onyx. 'Tall, baroque towers of iron that were saturated with psychic energy. You remember?'

Honsou nodded, recalling the unsettling sight of their arcane geometries and the chanting groups of gold-robed figures who danced around them, anointing them with the blood of sacrifices. He had put them from his mind after the raid, confident that the power of the Heart of Blood could resist their magicks.

He rounded on Onyx, raising his axe and saying, 'You told me that no sorcerous powers could defeat the Heart of Blood!'

'And none can, but it is free now and not bound to Khalan-Ghol any more.'

'We are defenceless?' asked Cadaras Grendel.

Onyx shook his head. 'No. The fortress's own sorcerers can maintain the barrier for a while, but without the power of the Heart of Blood, it is only a matter of time until Toramino's magicks break through and destroy us.'

'Blood of Chaos!' swore Honsou, heading for the great doors that led from his inner sanctum and waving his chosen warriors to follow him. 'How could the daemon get free?'

'The warsmith bound the Heart of Blood with three defiled awls, and it could only be freed if someone were to remove them.'

'But who would dare risk such a thing?'

Honsou pulled up short as Onyx said, 'Ventris and his warrior band?'

'Of course!' snapped Honsou. 'I should have known Toramino would never have stooped so low as to employ renegades just to fight for him. He and Ventris must have planned this whole thing! Free the Heart of Blood and then destroy us with sorcery. I'll have those bastards' entrails fed a piece at a time to the Exuviae.'

'Then Toramino never intended to blood his army here!' snarled Cadaras Grendel.

'No,' agreed Onyx. 'It would seem not.'

'How long do we have before the barrier falls?' demanded Honsou, setting off into the darkness of the tower of iron and towards the Halls of die Savage Morticians.

His warriors followed him, bolters and swords at the ready.